After years of development and testing, SOE and game developer LucasArts on Thursday released "Star Wars Galaxies," a multiplayer online game based on the movie. Highly anticipated by "Star Wars" buffs, the game is seen by industry analysts as one of the most significant opportunities yet for subscription-based online games to reach a broader audience. But getting started hasn't been easy for would-be Jedis. Many subscribers, who pay $50 for the software and a monthly fee of $12 to $15 for access to the online content, were unable to register the morning of the release due to problems with the game's registration servers. Some would-be players reported trying four or five hours to complete the sign-up process necessary to play the game, wading through a series of error screens and "try again" pages.

SOE largely had the registration problems fixed by midday, allowing players to sign up just in time to discover that most of the servers that host the actual game were inaccessible due to "database issues," according the game's main Web site. The upshot was that most players couldn't access the online portion of the game through Thursday night. Source: CNET